Faculty of Theology marks the opening of the 2026/2027 academic year

On 21 September, the Faculty of Theology (FT) held its opening ceremony for the 2026/2027 academic year.

The session, entitled “Living through change: Synodality, integral ecology and the future of the Church”, featured contributions from Dirk Ansorge, of the Sankt Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology, and Peter Rožič, SJ, of the University of Oxford. Moderated by Alex Villas Boas (UCP–FT/UCP-CITER), the event offered a theological reading of the profound transformations affecting both the Church and society, asking how the Christian tradition might discern, inhabit and responsibly guide change.

Drawing on the German experience of the Synodal Path, Dirk Ansorge identified a fundamental challenge: “How to cope with plurality and diversity within the Church?” and “How to preserve unity while admitting different forms of pastoral practice in dioceses and parishes?” The theologian also stressed the need to introduce effective structures of accountability and participation in diocesan leadership.

Peter Rožič, SJ, focused his contribution on the relationship between integral ecology, shared knowledge and digital governance. As he observed, “Digital mediation changes the conditions under which commoning takes place”; digitalising knowledge, therefore, does not simply mean placing it online. Within this framework, he emphasised that “Integral ecology is not an ethical add-on to digital governance”, but rather a perspective that transforms our understanding of the good being governed, the people who depend upon it, and the social and ecological limits within which shared life unfolds.The session, aimed at the entire academic community of the Faculty of Theology, took place at Católica`s Lisbon campus (Cardinal Medeiros Auditorium) and was broadcast simultaneously to the Braga campus (Isidro Alves Auditorium, ‘D’ building) and the Porto campus (EBI Room 100). It was also streamed live on YouTube for distance-learning students.